Useful Searches

Welcome to Smeargle's Studio! Please be sure to review the studio rules. Feel also free to check out our hub to learn more about this place!

Want real-time art feedback? Come chat with us in the studio's IRC channel! Log onto #smeargle on SynIRC, or click this link to visit us via mibbit! You can also check out the Art Room on Pokemon Showdown!

Several w.i.p.s. The least done was a butterfly lady, so I posted the two that had some progress. I'll get back to the second dragon after some metal training.

The Princess and Knight. I still haven't settled for a good name for the Princess. So many good options. : / For the Knight, I was practicing how to make the polished metal look. EDIT: I just noticed the Princesses arm is shorter than the other. D :

Ah, heres some new art, I've been praciticing in nothing but speed for colors. Despite having reached an previously untouched level of art "power", my speed was pretty slow, slaving away at three days for that piece was out of my norm. So I'm trying to recreate the same thing in less time, at least a day. I practiced on metal type objects, which I don't have as much knowledge of as dragon hide.

Butterfly lady side view, early try, didn't make the metal too good.

The second try, which took 3-4 hours, was definately more of a success.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, I spent more than 5 hours on this because I kept experimenting with various ways to manipulate the hues off of shades.

I was trying to experiment with hard shading, which is what I was originally trying to do with that horned dragon before it went all serious in the way it looked.

The PC tells me I only spent about an hour on it, which shocked me, because it felt longer than that. It's a W.I.P., but I stopped since its looking better than the previous failures which I didn't post. The fire is just a placeholder until I figure out how to draw fire in hard shading strokes.

Might I start out by saying how much you've managed to impress me? Specifically on the elite knight picture. These new pictures you've been making with colour have been amazing thus far, and are farcry better than from before. You have jumped skill levels in such a short amount of time and it amazes me.

Really impressive! Remember though that you need to keep in mind the light source and mantain a good range of values. Perhaps you can turn the pictures of some better artists greyscale and study how they place their darker/lighter regions, that's what I do.

Furosuto: Thanks, you could say I have achieved, bankai. : D Or Food honor, or the equivalent shonen-type powerup.

Although the dragon head painting happened after I was gleeful from winning several OU matches with an UU and below underdog team in Pokeshowdown. To see my favorites who are ranked to weak for competitiveuse consistently beat the likes of Gliscor and Mr. Istuneverything Jirachi, I was quite pleased. Of course, I had to make movesets that allowed them to synchronize. I think seeing that made me feel like I could beat the odds at anything and I had begun work on that Dragon Head like within the hour.

I actually didn't expect to ever get this advanced, I was satisfied being at the level where I was able to illustrate designs for my characters, but I guess If I'm able to go further than that, I should do something with it.

Yilx: Thanks for the advice. If I work on my Light source and values, my art should start looking better on average. Looking at a greyscale of good art is an excellent idea, I will use it on some art I saw that I wanted to figure out some stuff on.

Nice! I really like that dragon with the fin on it's head. I think what makes it really good is the colour choices, as sometimes you choose too big of contrasting colours. Like for example, if you used bright red, I think it would be too bright on the eyes, but this is a nice blend. Keep it up!

Hide(Move your mouse to the hide area to reveal the content)Show HideHide Hide

Looks like you put most of your effort into the head. The key is to remember where to place your darker/lighter areas. Remember that some colours are darker than others and keep on practicing! You're doing pretty well.

One thing though, try to avoid "pillow shading" and using black as a colour to shade. Use a secondary colour instead.

Furosuto: Thanks! The dragon is pretty sweet. I was happy to have gotten the pattern on its head to look good!

Yilx: Yeah, after some work on the head, I didn't work so much on the rest, lol. Thanks for the advice. I'll try not to shade with blacks. When shading with colors though, how dark should the color be?

Yo, I've got some art, but not that much, I also haven't colored anything since the finned dragon. I've just been focused on brainstorming and designing. Because theres nothing worse than spending time on a piece only for me to want to redesign it again. [sad] Which is why I have lots of black and whites and only color when I know its truly the final design.

My best piece in the past week, which I did today. Finally, the "Movie" version of the Flower and Ninja from the webcomic, but I gotta fix the Ninja's head on the side. Maybe I should have called the flower Risbesia? The ninjas name will probably be Phantom or Ignito. Phantom would be the codename, funnily enough there are others who call themeselves that elsewhere, and when they meet, it will be hilarious.

Me brainstorming various designs of the Princess, the bee, and Ice lady.

More brainstorming, this time the princess and knight .

Now for some so-so designs. Hidden inside the hide tag below. VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

Hide(Move your mouse to the hide area to reveal the content)Show HideHide Hide

A failed attempt at the Flower and Ninja.

In this work, the Princess was okay but something was wrong with the knight..

And this just looks weird.

The next thing I color, it has to be a final design of something, because if it becomes outdated later, then its just bleh. D:

Yilx: Thanks. Yes, I do keep telling myself to study drapery and how dresses fold and I keep forgetting. It really shows with how Pierra's dress is all bland looking. I've been obsessed with studying metals, and I might end up having bad stat distributions like somekind of UU poke if I don't study something else for art. lol

Nitpicking on the shield a little; you're using way too much black. I like the texture on the shield and sword though, you're getting the hang of this really well.

As for the background, it looks pretty unbalanced; the cliffs in the back shouldn't be casting a shadow that black as they're further back, and the hand in the center looks out of place; if you set everything back to grayscale, you might get what I mean. Try to avoid pillow shading too; other than that, I like the progress!

Yilx: Ah, true, I was trying to make that black sheen you sometimes see on metal.

Yeah, the landscape ended up weird. Yeah, trying to determine how shadows fell on the ground was the problem I had. I don't know why I picked the lightning source to be coming from the audience's view.

------

Some new art.

A new shield illustration:

An unfinished drawing of the Knight of Kool: What his role is in the story I haven't decided yet, anything from being the Protagonists rival to possibly an Antagonist. I have yet to decide. All I know is that he is suppose to be really "awesome" that he makes some of the characters look bad, which causes some problems. He also might be the strongest knight despite his unorthodox look. If a rival, the protagonist might be annoyed. If a friend, he will probably be defeated by a major villain.